As space-borne instrumentation increases in sophistication, technological advances must be made in order to meet mission objectives and needs. While heat pipes and cryogenic coolers frequently have been employed for close-in missions, a survey of cryogenic sensor cooling needs for future space missions, particularly for deep space operations, has identified numerous missions with formidable cooling requirements for which present technology is inadequate.
Radiative coolers offer a reliable, no power method of cooling spacecraft instrument sensors. They consist, in their simplest form, of a high thermal conductivity path from the spacecraft sensor to a blackened patch which radiates heat from the sensor into the relatively cold background of space. The structure disclosed here addresses two problems common to most radiative coolers: loss of cooling capacity due to warm objects within the radiative field-of-view, and incompatibility of the blackest paints with Electrostatic Discharge Susceptibility (EDS) requirements.